Operations Updates
ARM Climate Research Facility Operations Update - February 28, 2007
This bimonthly report provides a brief summary of significant accomplishments and activities in the operations area of the ARM Climate Research Facility (ACRF).
International Polar Year Draws on ARM Education and Outreach Efforts
International Polar Year (IPY) kicks off on March 1, and education and outreach efforts are an integral part of the international activities. In collaboration with several other agencies, ARM Education and Outreach staff are working to promote awareness of the IPY and climate research on the North Slope of Alaska. Many of the resources developed previously by ARM Education and Outreach are being utilized in several of these efforts as IPY outreach coordinators strive to incorporate traditional knowledge of climate change into their educational programs.
Community members check out the interactive climate kiosk at its permanent home in the Iñupiat Heritage Center in Barrow, Alaska.
In 2003, ARM Education and Outreach worked closely with the community of Barrow to develop an interactive kiosk rich with native perspectives about climate change on the North Slope; this kiosk has been a point of interest for others who want to do the same. ARM Education and Outreach is contributing footage from the Barrow kiosk to help build the traditional knowledge perspectives in the various multimedia resources associated with POLAR-PALOOZA. This IPY collaboration, sponsored by NASA and NOAA, features a national tour and video broadcasts. Several lesson plans and classroom activities written by the ARM Education and Outreach Program will also be adapted for use during POLAR-PALOOZA K-12 workshops. Footage from the Barrow kiosk was also provided to WGBH Boston, public television's pre-eminent production house, to incorporate traditional knowledge perspectives of Arctic climate change into their Learning from the People series. This special collection is available on the Teachers' Domain Digital Library for access by educators around the world.
In addition, the IPY will be a focal point at many conferences and workshops around the world for the next two years. Several workshops and symposia at the National Science Teachers' Association (NSTA) national conference in March will focus on polar climate, with presentations from leading educators and research agencies. ARM Education and Outreach is partnering with the North Slope Borough School District in sponsoring two teachers from Barrow, Alaska, to attend the national conference in Saint Louis. They are working together to provide climate-related web seminars from the NSTA conference to educators in schools around Barrow. More information on all these activities can be found on the web pages describing ACRF contributions to IPY.
Unattended Performance of Lidar Makes Life "Easy"
Scientists routinely use light detection and ranging (lidar) systems to obtain data about cloud and aerosol layering and optical properties. In October 2006, ARM scientists spent a week at the ACRF Southern Great Plains (SGP) site using the established Micropulse Lidar (MPL) and a new EZ Lidar to gather measurements of aerosols and cloud structure captured in both signals. Evaluation of the EZ Lidar performance by direct comparison with MPL data at the SGP Central Facility will allow scientists to validate the EZ Lidar as a new tool for automated retrievals of aerosol and cloud measurements.
Signatures of both clouds and aerosols are captured in the post-processed MPL retrievals from measurements taken on October 24, 2006 at the SGP site. (Click for a larger version.)
The EZ Lidar from Leosphere is a compact, robust, turn-key and eye-safe system developed to provides atmospheric researchers, operational meteorological networks and pollution agencies a standardized tool which can be easily integrated on an all-weather remote sensing platform. During simultaneous observations at the SGP Central Facility on October 24, 2006, data comparison from the two of the post-processed MPL retrievals and the automatically obtained EZ Lidar retrievals show the ability of the latter system to detect cloud structures from the range corrected profiles and to quantify the aerosol loads in boundary layer from the backscatter ratio profiles (see figures).
EZ Lidar retrievals obtained on October 24, 2006, show simultaneous detection of cloud structure signatures in the range corrected profiles (upper panel) and boundary layer aerosols in the backscatter ratio profiles (lower panel). (Click for a larger version.)
The large collection of instruments at the SGP is ideally suited for this study from another aspect. The EZ Lidar real-time software provides not only the lidar signal acquisition, but also retrievals of backscatter and extinction coefficient profiles, backscatter ratio profiles, optical depth, boundary layer and cloud heights, etc. Because of the limitations inherent in sophisticated and automated retrieval schemes, it is important to define and quantify their accuracy. A wide variety of SGP instruments will be used to evaluate various aspects of the EZ Lidar performance, contributing valuable input for decision making on further hardware and software improvements to reduce uncertainty in the lidar results.
